


From Distant Moons (I Am Growing Old With You)

by luninosity



Series: in space [2]
Category: Actor RPF, Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Space, Angst with a Happy Ending, Astronaut!Sebastian, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Marriage Proposal, True Love, artist!Chris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 08:23:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,343
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6276859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sebastian's finally come home after a long mission in space. And he knows there's something Chris isn't telling him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Distant Moons (I Am Growing Old With You)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Brenda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brenda/gifts).



> I wasn't going to do this, I kept saying "um...probably not, you can all figure out what happens next from the ending of the last one" when people kept asking...but then an Awesome Person whom I admire and am excited to be friends with asked about it as a birthday present, so...I gave in. And I think I like it. Oh Seb. Silly boys.
> 
> Happy (slightly belated now!) birthday! :D :D
> 
> Title from Ludo's "Anything For You," this time.

Sebastian’s boyfriend’s an artist.  
  
And Sebastian’s boyfriend’s going to leave him.  
  
Sebastian’s boyfriend’s the kindest person imaginable, a great happy golden retriever of a man with pencil-dust hands and a laugh that lights up the room. That laugh gets Sebastian to smile every time. Even only thinking of it, of Chris. Even now.  
  
Wind flutters past the glass pane and closed shutters of their bedroom window: autumn-dry and fleeting, trying to help, unsuccessful and aware.  
  
Chris Evans is brilliant: a Pixar-animator genius who gives earnest behind-the-scenes descriptions of his work for DVD commentaries, a man who before their first proper date had sketched a tiny crab Sebastian from _The Little Mermaid_ clutching a Starbucks frappuccino and had held it out hesitantly upon meeting, a man who adores his family and throws his heart and soul into every piece of his life, from conjuring up the next whimsical heartstring-shattering animated classic to arranging his best friend’s birthday extravaganza at Disneyland. Chris Evans is astonishingly unaware of his own brilliance: he blushes and turns red when put on the spot, stumbles over answers and then swears like a Boston dockworker, and lives with shivering social anxiety that’s left him hyperventilating in a men’s room before a major awards event or two.  
  
Sebastian thinks that the world will never know how brave his boyfriend is, how brave and how beautiful.  
  
A small stuffed animal, a cheerful three-eyed fuzzy thing based on one of Chris’s creations for the latest _Monsters Incorporated_ film, sits across the room on the dresser, watching him silently. He’d bought it before departing for the last mission. He’d filmed himself hugging it, leaving the fuzzy animal itself on Chris’s side of the bed, video displayed on the new laptop as some sort of tangible cuddling. He’d hoped so, at least.  
  
He’d hoped so.  
  
He sits up in bed—in their bed, where he’s home now, on Earth with solid ground and solid Chris—and sticks cold toes under sheet-hills. They fold up over his feet in plaintive navy-blue. Chris has gone to shower; had gotten up that morning and gone for a run, in the way of a man who’d gotten into a routine while his supposed other half had been far away and who seemed surprised at an attempted diversion into a drowsy morning kiss.  
  
Sebastian loves Chris Evans with every bit of his heart and soul. He swears that, would swear that, each day if asked. To the end of time.  
  
The wind blows past glass like old weary bones.  
  
He would swear that he’d be there for every panic attack and every lonely night. He _would_.  
  
Sebastian’s boyfriend’s an artist and a genius, except Chris might not be Sebastian’s boyfriend much longer. Might’ve already made that decision.  
  
He’d let Chris go on the run. That surprise had been too sharp. Had stabbed through his bare chest right to his heart; no spacesuit armor could’ve stopped the impact.  
  
He wriggles toes under his wistful sheet. He feels cold—Earth-cold, autumn-cold, grey skies and rustling leaves, not the infinite serene black heat-swallowing of space. He listens to the splash and leap of the shower telling him that he doesn’t know Chris well enough anymore, that five months—nearly six, this time—has been too long. Too much to ask: that interminable waiting.  
  
That waiting, when something could go wrong—he always hopes not, and they’re prepared and trained, of course—and a few months might become forever. That waiting sitting stonily atop Chris’s anxious brain.  
  
He _knows_ Chris is going to leave him.  
  
He shuts eyes, presses the heels of both hands into them, sees stars. Nearly laughs at the irony: he’s just back from months among them, after all.  
  
Months of experiments and knowledge and international collaboration aboard the International Space Station. The joy of discovery, the celestial spinning vistas, the jewel of life gleefully poised between earth and distant heavens. He’s an astronaut because he can’t conceive of anything else. He’s always wanted the stars.  
  
He wants Chris too. He’s wanted Chris with his whole heart since their first chance meeting three years before. Another fumbling passenger’d crashed into broad shoulders at that airport Starbucks; Chris had flailed arms around, falling, and Sebastian, ahead in line, had turned out of instinct and caught him. Their eyes’d met, as they ended up entwined; they’d both begun laughing. Simultaneously. Like fate.  
  
Chris had paid for his drink. Sebastian’d licked lips and—hoping, heart thumping like mad at the idea that maybe he was reading those beautiful soul-blue eyes correctly—had asked whether he could give Chris his phone number. To return the favor sometime.  
  
A year after that, Chris’s sketchbooks and favorite jeans had moved into Sebastian’s New York apartment; Sebastian’s science-fiction novels and scarves had comfortably invaded rooms in Chris’s Boston townhouse. They’ve been happy there.  
  
The shower flips off. Chris pokes his head out, steam-flushed and gorgeous. He’s trimmed his beard, Sebastian notices forlornly. Neat and tidy. He rather likes it a bit _un_ tidy, likes the way Chris can get caught up in creating art or lakeside camping trips and forget to worry about appearances.  
  
“Hey,” Chris says. “I was thinking we could go for a walk? I mean, if you’re up to it. If you want.”  
  
Sebastian tilts an eyebrow his direction. “I was completely cleared by our medical staff, you understand.”  
  
“No, um, I know, I just, you and the…” With a hand-wave, and then a grab at the towel around his waist. He’s adorable, bare-chested and shining with tiny water-droplets. Sebastian wants to get up and go over there and drop to his knees and put his mouth everyplace Chris’ll let him.  
  
He doesn’t move. Chris is retucking the towel. Likely wouldn’t appreciate it coming undone again.  
  
Chris finishes, “I know you and gravity, like, still get into arguments about where you are. So, um, I guess that was kind of stupid anyway. Asking.”  
  
“We’re working on it. One of these days we’ll come to an agreement. Were you honestly asking if I wanted to go for a walk? When you just went for a run?”  
  
“Um. I didn’t—okay, never mind.” Chris sighs. “I love you. You know that, yeah?”  
  
Chris has left tiny sketches, drawings of science-fiction aliens and favorite authors and cartoon characters, in so many places around the apartment. Tucked into pages of his battered paperbacks. Set atop his pillow. Propped up against the coffee-maker in the kitchen. Nestled in the pocket of his warmest coat. He finds them even now, weeks after planetfall, unexpectedly.  
  
“ _Te iubesc_ ,” he says. “I love you. I know you love me.” He does. He tells himself he does.  
  
There’s something Chris isn’t telling him. He knows those big self-conscious muscles and those ocean-floor eyes well enough for that. He knows when Chris is nervous. He knows Chris isn’t really very good at lying; he knows Chris has hastily countered “Nothing!” when asked what might be wrong.  
  
Chris hadn’t kissed him upon returning from the run. Had come to stand by the bed, gazing down; Sebastian, shuffling belatedly out of sleep, had been on the verge of cracking open blurry eyes. That beloved breathless sweaty presence had moved away, had gone to the shower.  
  
He thinks he knows Chris loves him.  
  
He thinks a lot of things, right now. He’s trying not to.  
  
Chris bites his lip, lets it go, crosses the room. He’s continued only wearing the towel; a thin ragged sunbeam sidles through window-shutters to caress broad shoulders and powerful muscle. He sits down on the bed and holds out an arm, inviting. “You sound sad, kid.”  
  
Sebastian curls into the arm. The motion hurts, the way his mouth tugging into a smile hurts: his own love flayed by the kindness. The pet name’s half a joke and half serious, a shared private bit of teasing; he’d told Chris once that he’d always fallen for older authoritative possessive men, he liked feeling small and safe and treasured, he liked being someone’s sweet boy. Chris had promptly run with the confession, not away: had grown out the beard and begun acting even more deliciously proprietary both in public and at home.  
  
He _does_ know Chris loves him. That isn’t why Chris is going to leave him.  
  
“I’m okay,” he says. “In Romanian if you want. _Sunt bine_.”  
  
Chris reaches over to pick up his other hand, gazing at his arm: at the gash, a fading ugly gouge along the inside, bandages off at this point but healing palpably still in progress. The touch is gentle, not disturbing the injury, only cradling his wrist and rubbing fingers over nearby skin, almost unconsciously. No words.  
  
“I’m really okay. It’s barely anything.”  
  
“I hate it,” Chris says softly.  
  
Sebastian shuts his eyes. That’s why.  
  
That’s the why: because he got hurt this time, even if only lightly so, and he could’ve left Chris all alone, and Chris is right to hate that.  
  
His life asks too much of someone who loves him. Chris stands on the observers’ platform and watches him blast off in a fiery departure to space over and over, patiently trembling with heart in mouth, and even when the launch goes flawlessly they’re apart for months as a consequence.  
  
_He_ asks too much. When he’s home he’s clumsy with reacclimation and busy with talk shows and space-program promotion. When he’s home he needs Chris too badly; somewhere deep inside he’s still a scared twelve-year-old boy learning a second new language in a second new country, a boy who’s never quite grown out of the fear that he doesn’t truly belong.  
  
Of course Chris is nervous, given that. Chris is a good man. The best man. Doesn’t want to cause hurt or harm. Most likely can’t figure out how to break the news. Maybe, maybe, is hoping for a last reason to not have to.  
  
“I’m sorry,” he says to that slender last hope. Too quickly. Trying too hard. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, I didn’t have a chance, I couldn’t—I suppose I could have tried, they could’ve sent someone to find you, but it wasn’t serious and we were already on the edge of the reentry window and I’m sorry, Chris, I’m sorry—”  
  
“No, come on.” Chris pats his arm. They’d made love the previous night, slow and achingly tender and drawn-out, hearts beating in time, kissing as Chris’s cock sank home inside his yearning body. “I know you didn’t, like, deliberately not tell me. I get that. I’m not mad at you. I just hate that you got hurt at all. It’s my thing, there’s nothing that’s your fault, and I’ll get over it.”  
  
“I should’ve tried.” He’s on the brink of tears suddenly. He doesn’t even know why. The injury hadn’t been his fault, hadn’t even been preventable. A flawed seal on the left arm of his spacesuit, giving out upon one last use. A last-minute switch to a spare, which wasn’t as precisely individually fitted. A fumbling scrape of his arm against equipment, trying to change in cramped quarters. He’d been fine—the suits were only a precaution in case of depressurization—and a crewmate’d slapped a field dressing on his arm and they’d reported the incident to Houston and been honest about the degree of severity and gone ahead with departure as scheduled.  
  
Chris, standing nervously in the area designated for family and friends, hadn’t been told. Hadn’t known until they’d emerged from space-shuttle doors, peeling off suit pieces in Florida heat, and waved.  
  
Here in New York heat has left the world. Falling leaves and heavy clouds. Sebastian normally loves autumn—pumpkin-spice and bonfire flavors, rich deep colors saturating the city, scarves and plush coats and accessories, holidays and tethers to the world—but can’t seem to find the color this time. Only the cold.  
  
“I should’ve—” he says, and stops, presses a hand into his eyes again.  
  
“Hey.” Chris sounds alarmed. Distress in Boston-harbor tides. Unhappy shores. His fault. “Hey, Sebastian. Look at me. I’m not angry, I swear. I’m not—are you crying? Did I say somethin’ dumb? Come on, don’t cry, kid, I’m _not_ angry, I’m not even upset anymore, I’m just glad I get to hold you, come on, please.”  
  
Swallowing down the next sob—Chris asked him not to cry—he manages, “I’m—I’m okay, I won’t—” Won’t what? Bleed all over you? Literally, metaphorically, every way that heaps more weight on your shoulders? “I’m all right.”  
  
“I don’t think that’s true.”  
  
“I’ll stay home.” He looks up, into the heartshattering well of that concern. Deep and genuine and compassionate, those eyes. Brimming over with art and strength and comprehension of day to day courage. “I’m in the rotation for one more mission but I’ll decline, I’ll take myself out, I’ll stay home with you, I swear, please let me try, I can do better—”  
  
“Sebastian!” Chris grabs his shoulders. Shakes him: not hard, but frightened, a too-tight grip. “What the fuck—where the hell’s this _coming_ from, why do you think I’d _want_ that?”  
  
“Please.” The word’s not an answer to the question but it just tumbles out. Uncontrolled. Broken. The sun goes away behind a cloud, beyond the window. No more peeking. “You said you want to hold me more—so you can, I’ll give up my spot, please just don’t—”  
  
“What?” Chris grips his shoulders harder. Baffled. “Stop. Sebastian. Please. Why—why would you—no, no, look at me, please. I don’t understand. You love being out there. I _know_ you do. Why’re you trying to give it up?”  
  
“For you.” Chris doesn’t see? Doesn’t know how much, how readily, Sebastian’d throw himself through meteors or back down to Earth or into the maelstrom of an Evans family homemade holiday theatrical production, to make Chris smile again? “For us. I know you hate it, I know you need me here, I’ll stay, I’ll do anything you want, just tell me what I can do, or, no, I’m sorry, I can’t make you—you can, you can leave if you want, if I can’t be what you—but please, please, I’ll try if you’ll give me a chance—”  
  
Chris’s face has gone absolutely white. Drained of color. Like the morning in the absence of sunlight. “You think _I’m going to leave you?”_  
  
“I know you didn’t go to see your family. When you said you were on the way there.” He pulls knees up. Wraps his arms around them. Lets his head drop. He’d gotten a chatty email from Chris’s little brother, asking about advice for a science-fiction film role; he’d written back asking Scott how Chris was doing. Scott had answered, cheerful and oblivious, _I’ll tell you when I see him, it’s been like a month!_  
  
“Oh no,” Chris breathes. Both hands fall to his side. Silenced. “Oh, god, no, Seb—”  
  
“I’m not upset.” He can’t look up. He’s lying; he feels entirely upset, overturned, upside-down and broken like a dusty prototype on an abandoned test lot. If he looks at Chris he’ll never get through this. And he’s begging. “I’m not, I swear, I can—if there’s someone else, or if you just need something different, I’m not angry, please just tell me, don’t lie to me, I can’t try to do better if you won’t tell me, so please.”  
  
His eyes burn and sting. He puts one hand over the healing line of pink on his arm. It stings too, laid bare.  
  
Chris says nothing for a single horrible blank second, in which Sebastian’s hope dies. It’s a quiet death. Unnoticed.  
  
And then Chris is reaching out, grabbing both his hands, eyes enormous. “No. Jesus, fuck, no—no, kid, you’re wrong, what the _fuck_ , what did I do or say or—no, please, that’s wrong, that’s so wrong, I _love_ you—”  
  
Startled, he lifts his head. He’d talk but tears keep clogging his throat.  
  
“Oh no,” Chris pleads, clinging to his hands. “Seb, no. I didn’t—how long’ve you been thinking—my family, fuck, that was months ago, before you even got back, you must’ve—you don’t _know_ I love you?”  
  
He tries to answer, can’t, and ends up just giving a kind of helpless jerk of his head, not a yes or no.  
  
“What did I do,” Chris breathes, “to make you think I don’t—”  
  
“It’s not you!” Astounded, he takes a hand back, touches his own mouth. Words. Yes. “I’m not—I know I’m not—it’s not that you don’t love me, it’s just too hard—”  
  
“It _is not too fucking hard to love you!”_ Chris shouts, effectively cutting him off. “It’s fucking _easy_ to love you, it’s the easiest piece of my goddamn _life_ , you’re the piece that feels _right_ , and I was going to fucking _propose!”_  
  
Sebastian, for one of the few times in his astronaut-and-science-trained life, literally cannot form a thought. Blankness. White static in his head. Chris’s hand still gripping one of his. Extremely tight.  
  
He blinks. Blinks again. No, this is real.  
  
He’s pretty sure.  
  
“Oh, for fuck’s sake—” Chris waves the other hand wildly. “Say something, come on, anything, say no if you want but—Seb? Are you okay?”  
  
“You,” he discovers, around the static. Uncomprehending. Puzzle-bits not clicking together. “You were…what?”  
  
Chris takes his hands again, both of them, fingers rubbing over Sebastian’s knuckles: shaken and seeking reassurance on both sides. His voice is pitched low and gentle now, as if trying not to spook a skittish wild kitten, one that’s shying away from trust. “Sebastian, you look like you’re about to pass out. Honestly, I’m kinda terrified here. Can you take a deep breath for me? One more? Can you—fuck, can you even hear me? Is it all right if I touch you?”  
  
Sebastian stares at him, nods, wonders what his expression’s saying. Bewilderment, probably. He is in fact a little dizzy but in the way that’s a revelation.  
  
He knows about Chris’s secret trips and secret-keeping. He can’t’ve been that wrong. Can he?  
  
“I said I was visiting family.” Chris shifts to face him more fully, keeping their hands joined. “I meant your family. Your mom and stepdad. I was, um, asking for their blessing. To marry you. I didn’t tell you because, y’know, I couldn’t say why, and I can’t lie to you. So I just said family. Let you think I meant mine.”  
  
“My mother…” He can feel the tension, the love, thrumming through Chris’s grip on his hands. Through Chris’s eyes, steady on his. “ _Mamă_ knows about this? And—and Dad?”  
  
“Your mom hugged me,” Chris supplies, confirmation through detail, “and told me she’s happy to see you happy at last with someone nice.” Which means his mother’s likely said more to Chris, regarding more than one of his exes. He hadn’t known they’d ever talked about that. “She said I was a nice boy. Your stepfather—you know. He doesn’t really know who I am.”  
  
Sebastian’s throat aches. He nods again. His stepfather barely knows who _he_ is. On good days. On the days he remembers he’s got an astronaut stepson, one he took in and raised and adored as his own. On bad days the disease wins against those memories.  
  
“But,” Chris goes on, apprehensive, gauging his reaction, “it was a good day, mostly, and—and I told him I was the man hoping to marry his son, and he asked me if I knew how you like your eggs in the morning, and I said yeah, avocado and red pepper, and I can’t cook but I’ll get up and get out all your ingredients and get coffee started, every day. And he said yes, then.”  
  
Sebastian opens his mouth. A single sound falls out, not even a syllable, a snapped bit of piano-wire, and then he’s crying. Real crying, not pretty, not media-friendly public-appearance tears of happy homecoming, but sobs that open him up from the inside, splintering ribs, pulling his heart out through jagged bone.  
  
Beyond the window the sun comes back out. It shines gold and clear. Light through autumn air. Splashed by the sunshine, Chris’s little stuffed monster-animal watches over them with all three kind eyes.  
  
Chris is crying too. Eyes wet. Spilling over into that tidy beard. “Please—shit, I’m doin’ this all wrong, I’m making it worse, I just thought—can I hold you, come here—” and he opens arms. Sebastian falls into them. Clings to him. Chris’s hand comes to rest tentatively on his back: afraid, he understands.  
  
He lets himself cry, then. Being held.  
  
After a while he reaches up blindly. Finds Chris’s chest, flattens his palm over heartbeat. Rests his head there too. Listens to the quickened rhythm: beating for him, the way Chris has done everything for him, the way Chris is his anchor here on Earth when he’s far away in the sky.  
  
He traces a heart, left-handed and clumsy, over freshly showered skin. Chris laughs, watery. “What was that? A happy face?”  
  
“A heart.” Sebastian pokes the spot for emphasis, feeling wobbly, feeling cleansed and emptied out and raw and tender. “My heart. _Inima mea._ I’m not the artist. In this relationship.”  
  
“Nah,” Chris whispers, rubbing his back. “I am. I’m your artist? If you want?”  
  
“You talked to my parents.” He takes a breath, lets it out: shaken but secure. Grounded. In Chris’s arms. “I never…I never even thought…I didn’t think you’d…”  
  
“Don’t say you never thought about it.” Chris pokes him right back, a scolding. “We _talked_ about it. More than once. You said you’d say yes, and then you said I shouldn’t decide anything right away, I should know what I was getting into, like you thought I didn’t. For the record, that’s kinda insulting, kid, you saying yes and then telling me I apparently think living with you’s a temporary thing.”  
  
“Oh.” Stunned into wordlessness. Again. How many times this morning? “Oh. But—but I didn’t mean—I just meant—I wanted you to know you didn’t have to—”  
  
“To love you?” Chris kisses the top of his head, collects his hand, stretches out his arm. Sets fingers next to mostly-knitted flesh. “I’m sure about this. I’ve been sure about this for, like, the last three and a half years. I’m all in if you are.”  
  
“You _met_ me three and a half years ago.”  
  
“Three years, five months, and two weeks, so I guess I’m the one counting. You don’t have to say yes. You can say no. Or not yet. If you noticed me getting texts—I sort of had to go for a run this morning because, um, I had to pick something up. Finally. But if you don’t want it that’s okay.”  
  
“I’m counting,” Sebastian says, mildly insulted in turn and thoroughly worn out from the rocket-ride of emotion, and tangles his legs with Chris’s and topples them flat on the bed. They land together, lying face to face amid navy-blue sheet-landscapes. Mountains and valleys, ups and downs. “Two weeks and one day. I’m just…I’m very off-balance. _Nu înțeleg_. I don’t understand. I’m trying to. You’re asking me to marry you.”  
  
“Kinda slow for an astronaut.” Chris’s breath’s warm against his temple. “Is it a gravity thing? Readjustment? To be fair, I didn’t technically ask you. Yet.”  
  
“Two minutes ago I thought you were leaving me. And you were—was it a ring?” He looks up, but shyness attacks in full force; he has to duck his head back down. “That you were picking up?”  
  
Chris doesn’t answer immediately, so he sneaks a glance that way.  
  
Chris is blushing. Pink behind a stripe of late-morning sunbeam. “Um, yeah. I sort of designed it. Did a ton of sketches. I mean, if you don’t like it we can go pick something else out at a store, anything you want, I just went with the one I thought you’d maybe like best, but—”  
  
“You _haven’t_ ,” Sebastian observes, lunging for recognizable teasing ground, “technically asked me yet.”  
  
“I had plans!” The world gets brighter: orbiting merrily away beneath them, holding up this New York City apartment and their bed and Chris’s indignation. Dancing through the void, and maybe he’s still off-balance but maybe that’s okay because Chris is too and they can find stable footing together.  
  
Chris goes on, hand stroking his hair now, firm and sweet, “You said you missed the city and Starbucks and fresh blueberries and playing the piano. I can’t bring your piano, but I kind of maybe was going to take you on a walk? Coffee first, then Central Park? Um, I might’ve told Scott to hang around with a picnic basket and my guitar, until I texted him that we were on the way?”  
  
Sebastian, shamelessly adoring the petting and the comfort thereof, hears the words but misses the significance. For a second or two. Then bolts upright. “You did _what?”_  
  
“Is that stupid?” Chris sits up too, sheepish and worried. “Careful with your—”  
  
“My arm, I know—it’s fine—Chris, you set this up for _today_ , didn’t you—”  
  
“Is that not, like—the way you might want? To be asked? I…guess I never, um, asked you. What you’d want, how you pictured that question. Fuck.”  
  
“I,” Sebastian says, dumbfounded, long-buried desires surfacing, confusingly gradual and sudden at once, sparkling like fine fizzy wine, “I never—pictured it. Happening. I don’t know what I want. No, yes, I do, I want this. Whatever you have planned. That’s what I want. Get up, we’re going to the park, get up, come on.”  
  
He’s tripping over pillows on the floor, naked because they’d slept naked, trying to find jeans, holding out a hand to be taken. Chris sits on the bed staring at him.  
  
“What?”  
  
“You.” A headshake, a laugh, and Chris gets up—the towel falls off, leaving him naked; Sebastian can’t help appreciating for a moment—and comes over and puts arms around him. Tips their heads together. “Listen. I want to, so much—I can’t believe I’m saying this—but like you said, two minutes ago you thought I was leaving you. You thought I would. The way you looked at me— And now you want me to propose. Are we…I don’t know what I’m saying. I don’t want you to say yes if you don’t think I mean it, if we’re not there, if we’re not on the same page with the question. Does that even make sense, fuck, I shouldn’t talk.”  
  
Sebastian takes a breath. Feels familiar arms around him: not a cage but a shield. Feels his own frantic explosive energy shift and settle. Lets the breath out. “ _Da_. Yes. Sorry.”  
  
“So you’re thinking maybe we should wait?” Chris leans back—though not away, not letting go—and brushes wild hair out of Sebastian’s face. The gesture disarms his heart, or would if any spiky weaponry’d remained. Every last defense has tumbled down already. “Like I said, I want to ask you. So damn bad it’s killing me. So don’t think I don’t. But I don’t want to push you, if you aren’t ready, if you tell me to wait. Don’t say yes like you think you have to, to make me stay. You don’t. I’m here as long as you want me, however you want me, kid.”  
  
Sebastian gazes at him. Heart too full for an answer. The earlier burst of reckless leaping has indeed settled, has pooled golden and crystal and tranquil inside him, the place of calm light where every fumbling piece might find a home.  
  
They’re both naked. Somehow that’s exactly right too. He’s afraid that if he talks he’s going to laugh: astonished elation pouring out of his mouth. His skin tingles, aglow with conviction.  
  
“I love you,” Chris says, bites his lip, blushes behind the beard. “I guess I maybe fucked up telling you that. Should’ve told you more. Like, every second.”  
  
“You do,” Sebastian says, happiness tugging his mouth into a brand-new shape, wider now: a smile. He loves Chris. So much. “You tell me. I just get scared. Sometimes. Stay right there.”  
  
“Huh? I mean, yeah, okay, but—”  
  
“Stay there!”  
  
He throws open his suitcase. Ruffles through as-yet not-unpacked clothing, souvenirs, random stray paraphernalia. Ah, okay, that’ll do—  
  
He runs back across the room. Throws himself onto one knee. Naked. At Chris’s feet. Holding up his offering. “Chris?”  
  
“What,” Chris says, baffled, “what’re you—”  
  
“I love you,” Sebastian says, and vaguely waves the slim metal circle at him. “It’s, ah, a fastener from my old spacesuit. The one that was mine, not the spare. We left it. But I wore it a lot, it kept me safe outside, and I couldn’t just leave the whole thing, not its fault one seal stopped working, so I took a piece off to, um, bring home. Just an equipment clip really. It’s not a good ring, I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of anything better.”  
  
“…ring…?”  
  
“You said you were here however I want you,” Sebastian says. “You were all in if I was, you said. You know how I like my eggs in the morning. You keep me safe. Like, ah, like my spacesuit. We keep each other safe. We’re not perfect. I know you need me to be here. I know I—I get scared. Of being left alone. But I’m stronger with you. I can be scared and be okay, _sunt bine,_ I’m fine, I’m going to be fine, with you beside me. You told me I shouldn’t say yes unless I felt ready. I do. I didn’t know until right now, but I do, I know, I’m all in with you, I love you, I love you, Chris, so this is me asking you to marry me?”  
  
“Oh my god,” Chris whispers. He’s crying again. He even sniffles: outlined in autumnal gold, standing motionless while Sebastian holds out a silly piece of spacesuit on one knee. He’s breathtaking.  
  
“If it helps,” Sebastian says, unshakeable, certain as he’s never been about anything before, “I still want you to—to do everything you just said. I never imagined—that could happen, for me—but I do now, I am right now, and you promised, so maybe I can have the—the blueberries and the picnic and the coffee? Did you mention your guitar?”  
  
“I did,” Chris says right back, disbelief giving way to the same radiant sureness that’s running along Sebastian’s bones, smile dawning behind wet eyes. “I did, and yeah, yes, oh my god fuck yes, I love you, you deserve everything, and yes—here, give me that—”  
  
The suit-fastener circle’s much too big and falls off Chris’s finger, not even close; they both grab for it and start laughing and hold on together, clinging amid the sunshine and the return of happy gusts of wind past the windowpane. A pillow nudges Sebastian’s toes on the floor. Chris’s fingers stay entwined with his.  
  
“I’m going to propose to you so fucking _awesomely_ ,” Chris declares to his hair, lips brushing his forehead. “Best proposal ever. Everything you should get to have.”  
  
Sebastian considers this phrasing for a second. “Is fucking involved?”  
  
“Totally. With you wearing nothing but my ring, kid.”  
  
“I’ll buy a proper one for you.” They both grin at the spacesuit relic; Chris sets it on his nightstand, and decides, “You can if you want, but I’m keeping this one forever, you gave it to me.”  
  
“That was the idea. Forever. I did…there’s something else I meant to talk to you about. I forgot.”  
  
“Something good, I hope.” Chris kisses him gently. “Something you do want? Just tell me. I can make it happen for you.”  
  
“I have one more mission,” Sebastian murmurs, leaning against him, soaking up that reality. “Or at least I’m in rotation for one more; we never know…but I got called in, during the check-ups, after getting back…because I’ve been such a good ambassador for the space program, social media, my videos about space-station life, talk show interviews…”  
  
“People love you,” Chris agrees. “I love you.”  
  
“After my last mission, then…they want to offer me a job. At NASA. Some sort of public relations office; they’re still working out the title and details. But they don’t want me to retire and leave the program, the way some astronauts have. They want me on staff.”  
  
Chris’s arms squeeze him more tightly, then slacken. Chris pulls back just enough to look him in the eye. “You want to, don’t you?”  
  
“I…think I do,” Sebastian says, slowly. Working it out, holding fast to the warmth of blue eyes on his. “It’d be a new challenge. Bringing that—that love to everyone. Publicity, some writing, probably, community outreach…maybe even a book, a memoir… It’s in the future, as I said. One more mission first. And we’ll see. But the important part is…it’d be a job here. On Earth. With—with everything I love.”  
  
“You’re my everything,” Chris says, and lifts his hand, and drops a kiss on the back of it: his injured arm. “Everything. You’ll be brilliant at that. Of course you will. And I’ll be there with you. Every step of it.”  
  
“You will. Yes.” He kisses Chris this time, adds, “Are you technically my fiancé now? If you said yes to me?”  
  
Chris’s eyes get comically round. “You’re going to be my husband! And—and you’re _my_ fiancé!”  
  
“So,” Sebastian asks comfortably, resting against _his_ future husband’s shoulder, in those strong arms, “where’s my elaborate romantic proposal, if that’s the case?”  
  
And Chris laughs. So Sebastian laughs too, and Chris kisses him soundly; they scramble into clothes and Chris makes him turn around while a ring-box gets dug out of a sock-drawer, and Chris sends a text and grabs Sebastian’s hand as they run to the apartment’s sleek shiny elevator through bracing crackling air.  
  
Sebastian forgets his keys, unused to carrying them around; Chris laughs again and says it’s fine, he’s got his, he’ll let them both in. “Yes,” Sebastian says, “you can open all the doors,” and Chris decides to fill in, “You opened the one to my heart,” which makes Sebastian roll eyes at him and point out, “I was trying to be subtle, and I love you,” before tripping over nothing at all on the sidewalk.  
  
Chris catches him. Kisses him again. Buys him Starbucks, because Chris has a plan for this day, one that’s presently in motion and going to happen, and there’s a café on the corner by their building which is surprisingly not busy, so they’re in and out in a whirlwind of coffee-steam and whipped cream. Sebastian takes a sip. Caramel-cinnamon warmth flows through him. Chris is holding his hand.  
  
Next Chris steers them to an obviously prearranged spot in the park. The world’s emerald and russet and cerulean: gemstones in silver-gilt fall settings. Leaves tumble and brush Sebastian’s hair; a wild wandering breeze tugs at his scarf. He grins at it as it coaxes him toward the future.  
  
Scott’s waiting with a blue-and-white checked blanket and a picture-perfect woven basket and Chris’s guitar, or mostly waiting; he’s texting someone one-handed and eating a sandwich. “Mom says hi and call her this afternoon. You know. Because of the thing. After the thing.”  
  
“Go away,” Chris says. “I’m trying to propose.”  
  
Scott’s eyebrows go up. “Thought it was a surprise.”  
  
“Not anymore. Things happened. Good things. Go away.”  
  
“Sure,” Scott agrees, handing over guitar and basket, “I’ve got a date.” Sebastian, based on past experience with Chris’s little brother, is ninety-nine percent sure that in fact Scott will be hanging around elsewhere in the park and eavesdropping, but if Chris is choosing to believe this is not the case, then he will too.  
  
Chris takes his hands. Fusses over getting him to sit down: comfortable, not on a rock or a root, not bumping his arm. Sebastian makes an _I AM an astronaut and I can solve problems in deep space_ expression at him but doesn’t protest. Too nice, being cared for. Being loved.  
  
Chris pulls out chocolate-covered blueberries. Spicy chicken and extra mustard. Sparkling water.  
  
“Not champagne?”  
  
“That’s after.”  
  
“Ah,” Sebastian says, licking mustard off a fingertip, discovering that—in the wake of the melodramatic morning—he’s thoroughly ravenous.  
  
Chris beams at him. Continues to beam at him, watching him eat. After a while picks up the guitar and starts playing for him: love songs, contemporary and older, Bon Jovi and Elvis Presley and Green Day. Sebastian sings along in between bites, and feeds Chris chicken with one hand, and finally sprawls out on his back across their blanket: full and content and anchored to the earth and the park and the man he loves.  
  
He stretches out a hand to touch Chris’s leg, beside him.  
  
Chris glances at him, smiles—not wide, but soft and private and oddly shy—and switches the song to “Kiss The Girl” from _The Little Mermaid_ , which makes Sebastian laugh out loud, remembering first dates and Sebastian-crab sketches and falling head over heels in love on the spot, right then and there.  
  
“Kiss the boy?” Chris suggests, pausing.  
  
“Oh—yes, I can get up—”  
  
“No, I meant can I kiss you. You look comfortable.”  
  
“Please kiss me,” Sebastian agrees, tipping his head up; Chris sets down the guitar and does. Wonderful weight bending over him, filling his vision, everyplace around him.  
  
Chris sits back. Then adjusts position. On one knee. Trees shake rusty leaves in anticipation.  
  
Sebastian promptly sits up. He wants to be upright for this. And he’s not feeling lazy anymore.  
  
“You could’ve stayed put,” Chris says. Cheeks pink. Blushing. “You did look comfortable. And I, um, I want you to be comfortable. Forever. I had a speech, I practiced a whole speech, but—some of it won’t work now because it’s not a surprise, and anyway it doesn’t matter, I know what I want to say. I love you. You give me a calm place when I need that, someone who’ll listen to whatever’s stressing me out, and you just smile at me and I know I’m going to be okay. Even if you’re far away. You’re here for me. You take care of me with—with stuffed animals and videos and that very naked observation-window picture you sent which I can’t _believe_ you didn’t get caught taking, but I love it, I love you.”  
  
Sebastian’s crying. Or maybe laughing, by the end. He’s not sure.  
  
“I want to be here for you.” Chris holds out the box, yanks it back, actually opens it, holds it out again. “I want to be your anchor, your calm place. The person you can come back home to. I promise you I’ll always be here for you. I promise you I’ll be right here for your last mission, and right here when you get back, and right here for whatever NASA wants you to solve for them after that. I promise, like I told your family, I’ll make coffee for you every morning and I’ll, um, honestly I’ll probably fail at cooking but I’ll try to help you make things. I want to tell you you’re my sweet kid and put you on your knees or on your back in bed, the way you like it, me on top of you, inside you, making you know you’re mine. I want to sing karaoke with you in dive bars and hold your hand when we go absolutely everywhere, like, to the grocery store or secondhand bookshops or wherever you want to go. I want you to know I always want to hold your hand. You said you were stronger with me, and you make me stronger too, you make me happier than I’ve ever been in my fucking life, so—Sebastian Stan, will you marry me? Please?”  
  
The ring’s perfect. Elegant white gold, traditional yet modern, slim and graceful. Etched with two tiny stars in Chris’s familiar hand-sketched style, touching: shining together.  
  
A leaf plops down on the blanket, narrowly missing Chris’s head. A few passersby and joggers stop, attracted by spectacle. The ring continues to shine. The world’s full of chocolate-covered blueberry-taste and white-gold gleam.  
  
Sebastian’s crying in earnest now, unashamed of being a puddle of emotion—Chris is too, so that’s good, everything’s good, everything’s incredible—and he has to try a few times before he can get out, “…yes!”  
  
“Yes,” Chris echoes, quivering. “Yes?”  
  
“I already asked you, yes, yes, _da—te iubesc_ , I love you, yes, I want to marry you, I do, oh—I think that’s what I say when we get married—I get to marry you!”  
  
He’s in Chris’s arms and he’s not sure how or when that happened. But he’s being wholeheartedly kissed and fiercely cuddled and Chris’s beard’s softly scratchy against his face and he never wants to move from this spot. Chris’s fingers take the ring. Slide it onto his finger. Where it fits flawlessly. Made for him.  
  
“I love it,” Sebastian whispers, awed. “I love you.”  
  
“I love the way it looks on you.” Chris holds his hand, turns it, gazes at pale gold and stars across his finger. “It looks…good.”  
  
“It looks right. On me.”  
  
“So right. Just—yeah. Wow. I mean…wow.”  
  
The passersby and joggers and a reappearing Scott applaud. The tree behind Chris sheds more congratulatory leaves.  
  
“I know I said I brought champagne,” Chris says, holding him, “but I really kind of want to take you home and toss you back into our bed. Naked. Except for this.”  
  
“I love your plan,” Sebastian tells him. “Scott can have the champagne. You can take me home.”  
  
Three splendidly erotically satisfying days later, he steps out onto the _Daily Show_ set for an interview. Most recognizable astronaut in a generation. Face of NASA and space-exploration enthusiasm. Representation for every person who hopes to reach the stars: an immigrant, an American dream, an unabashed geek, a man proud of his same-sex partner.  
  
Sebastian knows his own political and social capital. He also knows that his thighs and backside still twinge pleasurably when he sits down. He waves. Grins.  
  
The host catches sight of his hand. Of that shimmering decoration. Says, “Okay, I know you’re here to talk about life on the space station and the open call for new astronaut recruitment, but—now I’ve gotta ask, you’re the sexiest man we’ve ever sent into space, your millions of social media followers agree with me, and I know you’ve had a partner for a while, so—is that what I think it is?”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says, “it is, but, well, you should really ask Chris about wedding plans, he’s the artist and designer, you guys want to say hi?” and just like they’ve planned, host jumping up in mock surprise, Chris strolls out from the wings, dressed in a neat blue sweater over a button-down and slacks, and waves. The audience roars. Going crazy at the unexpected, the event, the breaking news.  
  
Chris _is_ nervous. Sebastian can tell. Chris has never done public appearances and gets anxious about eyes on him. He’s attended low-key space agency functions as Sebastian’s date but this is several orders of magnitude bigger. No going back.  
  
This had been Chris’s idea. Because, he’d said, as they’d left a certain jewelry shop—Chris had designed his own ring to match; Sebastian’d asked him to, wanting that, and they’d come in to drop off sketches the day before—he _wasn’t_ scared. Not of this. Not now.  
  
Sebastian’s not scared either. Not of this, not of any new challenges or unexpected stumbling-blocks or old wounds. Not now.  
  
And he gets up and runs across the stage to launch himself at Chris, this part wholly unplanned, and kiss his fiancé in front of the studio audience and the world.  
  
The world’s applauding and the host’s laughing and Chris’s arms go around him, and Sebastian smiles and holds onto Chris in turn, heart pounding, in love.


End file.
